Wildcat Gulch

[dima]

On Nov 11 1944, a US army C47 transport went down in Wildcat Gulch (one of the channels that drains the North face of Barley Flats). Like most of these, there's little information on the internet, and many mostly-unhelpful contemporary newspaper reports. Today (almost 75 years later!) I went up there to see if there's anything left to find.

My thinking was (and is) that the impact occurred in any one of the numerous small drainages in the upper area of Wildcat Gulch. So if I knew which channel was the right one, it'd make sense to go to Barley Flats and hike down. I don't have this info, though. So instead I started below at the mouth of Wildcat Gulch, at Upper Big Tujunga rd, and hiked up. The hope was that I'd find breadcrumbs to follow as I climbed up.

I got up late, took my sweet time in the morning, and started walking bright and early at 11. Big Tujunga is flowing nicely, and there're enough big boulders to make the crossing easy. I started a bit East of the main channel of Wildcat Gulch:



This channel was dry, although the main one was flowing nicely. The forested ridge in the background is the general area of Barley Flats. I didn't get nearly that high today. Initially the area is wide open and relatively flat. As you follow the drainage, it eventually steepens, and closes up. Relatively soon after leaving Big Tujunga I started seeing chunks of metal. The first one:





The breadcrumbs were filling in nicely:





Then the canyon started to narrow:



And I'd still see chunks of stuff periodically





The plane was flying to the SW, so the thought was that it impacted on a ridge on the West side of the Wildcat Gulch drainage. So I'd choose the West fork of any split I would come across. This seemed like a good strategy. Eventually I cam across a small, flat area below a number of steep converging drainages. This served as a catchment basin, and contained a large number of the biggest pieces I'd see today:









Above this point the channel splits multiple ways, each choice being very narrow, steep and brushy.





I followed a number of these, finding nothing. But that doesn't mean much: anything flowing downstream wouldn't settle in these steep areas. I felt satisfied-enough, and wasn't feeling like looking for needles in a haystack, so I turned back at this point. There are a few avenues for research to follow-up on, so I'll come back if there's any new info. On the return I found some chunks I missed on the way up:













Also, "Wildcat Gulch" appears to be an appropriate name. Didn't see any feline tracks, but there were lots of deer tracks and more-than-the-usual number of deer bones. This young buck may have gotten caught:



I followed the Wildcat Gulch drainage all the way back to Big Tujunga. Ran into this at the river:



I'm 99% sure this is a gate across an old road. The photo is looking across the road. The gate is open; it swings around the post at the bottom-right of the photo, and connects to the post on top of the photo. After years of neglect, the gate bar is now half-buried. I followed the roadbed across Big Tujunga, and up to the road. There're some metal bollards in the brush to make sure people don't try to drive this road. Interestingly, I can't find evidence of this road in the old aerial photos or the old usgs quads. Granted I didn't try very hard. If somebody else wants to find info, I wouldn't complain

[headsizeburrito]

Nice!

Any plans to ID some of the parts or did anything look recognizable enough to confirm? You guys were able to ID some parts from a previous wreck, but I imagine there is more documentation available for the passenger jet and F4 than for something this old.

[dima]

Nice!

Any plans to ID some of the parts or did anything look recognizable enough to confirm?

Nothing was super obvious to me. This is a BIG airplane, and the parts I found were relatively small, so there're a lot of gaps to fill. If somebody has a parts manual (like mattmaxon had for the F51), the stamped steel chunks could be looked up. I'm hoping to get more info somehow and to figure out where the bigger pieces are. Supposedly some stuff was salvaged, but even so there should be more.

[dima]

Oh, I just remembered that the big chunk had some hard-to read text stenciled onto it. I now think it says "FUEL & INSTRUMENT LINES". There you have it

[dima]

It's "FUEL & INSTRUMENT LINKS" actually:

[Jaya]

I sent your info to a friend whose hobby is following plane crashes. He turned this up:

11 November "Los Angeles, Nov. 12 (AP) - Sheriff's deputies and Army rescuers climbed rain-sodden, mountainous terrain tonight endeavoring to reach the wreckage of an Army twin-engine cargo plane which crashed late last night against Strawberry peak, in the Mt. Wilson area. Army officials said 13 persons, all military personnel, were aboard. The plane, en route from St. Joseph, Mo., to Mines field here, last reported by radio to Bakersfield about 8 p.m. yesterday. Flight officer Earl L. Olson of the air transport command's sixth ferrying group sighted the wreckage today. An Army spokesman said it had not been determined if any of the passengers survived." Douglas C-47B-1-DL Skytrain, 43-16143, c/n 20609, assigned to the 561st Base Unit, Rosecrans Field, Missouri, was piloted by Rae C. Kelly. Joe Baugher states that the aircraft was en route from Hamilton Field, San Rafael, California, when it crashed in Wildcat Gulch, in heavy clouds. Twelve killed, one survived. Follow-up coverage by the Associated Press, noted that two injured men were rescued from the site, PM 3/c Buford Chism, and Cpl. Kenneth Bedford, home towns not listed, who were taken to the Pasadenaarea Army hospital. "Not all the 11 victims died instantly when the plane struck the peak, rebounded and disintegrated, scattering bodies and wreckage in Wildcat canyon in the Mt. Wilson area. 'We heard one man, somewhere down in the canyon, crying for help during the night,' rescuers quoted the sailor. 'We tried to locate and help him, but in our condition we couldn't get down there. We heard him dying.' Deputies said the sailor had disregarded his own injuries to minister to the Negro soldier, more seriously hurt. The dead, they added, included three Majors and several Navy men." An Army nurse was among the victims.

[dima]

Thanks, Jaya. This was a pretty big deal, and the LA Times ran stories about the accident and the subsequent rescue effort on Nov 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th. They're interesting to look at:

11-13.pdf

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11-14.pdf

(68.2 KiB) Downloaded 47 times

11-15.pdf

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11-16.pdf

(52.25 KiB) Downloaded 48 times

[dima]

I went back today. Didn't really have more information than before, but I thought about it some more, and decided that I was probably close to the main impact site the last time, and there weren't THAT many drainages to check out. I'd show up early, with plenty of time to look around.

So I started walking at noon. It was warm. Big Tujunga and Wildcat Gulch are both still flowing. Made it to the uppermost cluster of parts from the last time. That time I checked out all the big-ish drainages splitting off from this point. This time I looked around carefully, and saw a glint directly above the cluster of parts, on the slope to the West. I scrambled up the brushy slope, and found a big chunk of aluminum. Climbing further up this slope revealed lots and lots of stuff. This is the main debris field in fact. It's very brushy, and there're lots of airplane pieces stuck in the bushes. The brush is worst at the bottom. Further up the slope consolidates into a minor E-W ridge splitting two minor drainages. There're some use trails here (from deer, or maybe green-thumbed humans). I kept going up to get a sense of the terrain. The main N-S ridge between Wildcat Gulch and Wickiup Canyon is only about 300ft above the cluster of pieces I found the last time, and only the lower 100ft or so (at most) hold debris. The N-S ridge has a good trail; more on this later. This is a bit N of point 4361.



I then went back down to follow the debris. From the top of my subsidiary E-W ridge a glint was visible to the North, across the drainage:



I scrambled across eventually. It's a sizeable piece of plane:



This piece is sitting on a South face of its ridge. The newspapers say the airplane was travelling SW, so South faces shouldn't hold a lot. The plane may have impacted the ridgetop above this piece, depositing stuff on either side. On this theory I checked the next drainage to the North, but only found a small piece about 1 square inch, right near the ridge top. The brush is thick, so I probably missed stuff, but clearly THAT drainage doesn't hold as much stuff. In any case, most of the debris is on the N slope of the E-W ridge.

There're a large number of small pieces, but few large pieces: this site was salvaged. The interesting pieces:



















And the REALLY interesting pieces. It's a pitot tube!



And the prop hub:



I checked: C47s do indeed have 3-blade props. It'd be interesting to check the pieces with part numbers. Anybody have a parts list for this one? Mattmaxon?

Eventually I decided that there aren't any big pieces left, and I could leave. Making a loop was the obvious thing to do, so I climbed up to the firebreak, and took the trail down. There's partly-buried black tubing loosely following the ridge. It's undamaged, and is carrying water. It runs a long way. As I descended the firebreak, eventually it drops off to the West, into Wickiup canyon. I didn't follow. The firebreak has a good trail until point 4185, then it becomes brushy. Point 4185 has a blank witness post:



Eventually I dropped down to Big Tujunga, and that was that.

[dima]

Update: found a parts manual for the C-47, but none of my parts are in it...

[Sean]

Thanks for the update. I wonder if we should have a subforum for this archaeological stuff, including exploring mines and cabins.

[dima]

My feeling is that this isn't necessary. We don't have THAT many posts total, so I'm not sure what is to be gained by making more subforums. But I wouldn't complain if you did it

[Sean]

Typically I lean towards the minimization of subforums. Though I think they have a value in a couple ways. First, there is the organizational value, which makes it easier to browse by category. But we don't want to over-organize, thus cluttering the home page with forums. Second, there is the value of identification, which makes it clear for visitors to see what the site is about and what our particular interests are, thus attracting like-minded people. I might try accomplishing this with the "pinned topic" feature for sub-categories that don't have a subforum.